Intoxicated
by kaorismash
Summary: TezuRyo. Tezuka makes for a rather strange drunk.


**Title:** Intoxicated  
**Words:** 2,105  
**Summary:** Tezuka makes for a rather strange drunk.

Written for Kish. ♥

* * *

Tezuka peered down into the old-fashioned glass dangling between his thumb and fingers and swirled it around. Ice rattled against its confines and the amber liquid rippled. There a was curious expression on his face as he studied the drink. Tezuka had never been much of a drinker, but it was already his third glass. He brought the rim to his lips and quickly downed the rest of the drink. The glass quickly found its way onto the countertop and he forced himself not to react violently. He couldn't, however, stop from cringing as the bourbon burned a trail of spices mixed and mint and vanilla down his throat. He breathed out harshly and ran his tongue tentatively around the walls of his mouth. A hint of caramel and oak remained and his mouth was unpleasantly dry. The bartender was in front of him immediately refilling the glass. Tezuka made a face. He wanted to tell him that he didn't want to drink anymore, but his tongue felt thick and lax. He had a feeling the man wouldn't listen to him though, and for that he cursed Atobe.

It seemed the drink had made him a bit too relaxed, and the slur rolled off his tongue smoothly. Someone scoffed and the light from his left was blocked. A sidelong glance from behind his rimless glasses revealed a tall and slim male with dark layered hair. He stared at it, noticing how very strange the color was under the bar's golden lights. He wanted to know what color it really was. The man sat down on the stool next to the one between them.

Tezuka opened his mouth to speak, but found he didn't know what to say. He pursed his lips and stared thoughtfully at the stranger, studying him closely. It was a blatant stare, and it would've been more than obvious through his peripheral even if he wasn't paying attention. Tezuka found himself being ignored in favor of ordering a drink.

A noticeable frown pulled down the corners of his mouth. Tezuka usually never minded being ignored, but now he felt a small twinge of annoyance. It was the drink, the half of his brain that was still relatively functioning blamed. The other half was a dull buzz

He shifted his body slightly towards the stranger but kept his arms folded loosely on the tabletop. He cleared his throat and tried to get rid of the taste of dry wood. "Who are you?" His voice sounded slightly cracked, but it couldn't be helped.

The reply was in the form of silence. Tezuka's frown deepened. Perhaps he hadn't asked loudly enough; usually that wasn't a problem. Tezuka wasn't used to being unheard, but he wasn't used to being loud either. He asked again, "Did you—"

"I heard you." The interruption was just as rude as it was abrupt. Tezuka wasn't used to being cut off either. He fixed a hard glare on the stranger just as someone whistled. The bartender slid the highball glass from the other end of the counter. The man caught the narrow glass swiftly and lifted it up to his lips, sipping leisurely.

Tezuka huffed and twisted his body around so that he was facing the wall again. With his head nestled on his arms, he gazed at the bubble suspended in the middle of the heavy sham base of his glass.

The glass was set down roughly against the wooden surface and the ice clinked against the crystal glass like bells. Tezuka pretended he couldn't see it, just like the man had pretended he couldn't see him.

"Echizen," he said after an obvious pause. His voice was deep and husky and strangely compelling. Tezuka shifted his head over to the side to look at Echizen before the name even registered through his sluggish mind. What did register immediately, and with a startling jolt, was how amazingly gold his narrowed eyes were.

_Echizen,_ Tezuka thought, and then he wanted to feel how the name rolled off his tongue. It came out slurred and the corners of the alluring eyes tightened. "Familiar," he murmured tiredly against his sleeve. He felt lethargic now, but he couldn't go to sleep, not in the middle of the bar. Staring at plain and boring things were bound to lull him to sleep however, so he kept his eyes fixated on Echizen, intent on absorbing every little detail. A few strands of hair slid down over his glasses and obstructed his view of Echizen's face. He stared at them blankly, almost moodily, as if trying to comprehend why they were trying to impede his careful study of the most captivating eyes he'd ever seen.

"Che." Echizen was still giving him that strange look, but Tezuka didn't mind so long as he kept looking at him. Then the man shrugged him off again with a small scoff and returned to his drink.

The image of Echizen turning away engraved itself into his memory just as a flurry of reds and blues and whites flashed through his mind unbidden. Tezuka pushed himself upright suddenly. He didn't expect the sudden rush of vertigo and became unbalanced. There was a clatter of glass against wood. His vision blurred and he felt as if the world was spinning out of control. He saw Echizen staring at him in surprise before he found himself blinded by the strange dark shade of black and the exotic golden eyes. Tezuka, now steadied by the shoulders, blinked rapidly and wondered why everything was out of focus. Tezuka frowned again. He never liked it when the world went out of focus. He didn't feel stable, didn't feel like his feet were planted firmly to the ground because the ground felt like it was above his head, constantly rotating around. Tezuka decided to place the blame on the young man. He didn't like the many things that Echizen seemed to be reminding him of tonight with just his presence.

"What?" Echizen asked exasperatedly when Tezuka made no move to support his own weight against the counter.

Tezuka furrowed his brows, thinking hard. He couldn't remember anymore. He tried to remember the feeling the fleeting thought of colors brought but could only think of the colors of the rainbow. Nothing else came to him. "I forgot," he murmured again, eyes glazed. Tezuka noticed a thin dark brow rising up from behind Echizen's dark fringe. Tezuka had trained himself at a very young age to notice every tiny little detail. Anything at a close range would be easily recognizable, from the shape to the color to the texture. Today though, his vision remained fuzzy, constantly moving in and out of focus. "You make things blurry," Tezuka mumbled unhappily, eyes half-lidded. He wasn't the type to complain, and he definitely wasn't the type to pout. He found himself doing so anyway.

Echizen snorted gently. "Your glasses fell off," he said wryly. Tezuka felt as if he'd just been insulted, could literally hear the world "stupid" ringing after the sentence in his mind just as Ryoma's voice does in his ears. There it was, another thing that rubbed him the wrong way, being insulted.

Tezuka tried to glare at Echizen without straining his eyes, but it took too much effort to pierce through someone who was just a big gigantic blob of hair and skin and gold. Tezuka gave up halfway and decided ignoring him was the best course of action. He pushed off the man and slouched back onto the counter, head nestled in his arms. The warmth of the firm hands on his shoulders lingered no matter how much he tried to brush off the feeling. Worse yet he could feel Ryoma's stare on his back. He shifted uncomfortably on his seat.

The air around Tezuka shifted and Echizen settled down on the stool next to him, leaning an elbow on the polished counter. "In case you flail around again and fall off your chair," he answered his questioning glance nonchalantly, with a shrug. Tezuka could hear amusement layered beneath his tone, but paid it no mind.

Tezuka was staring at Ryoma's arm through his messy chestnut locks, or more specifically, how unnervingly close it was to him. Echizen was breaching his personal space when all night no one had dared approach him besides the host of the party. He eyed the arm in disdain, eyes falling closed to a squint as he tried to focus the red shirt. From close up the continuous red wasn't so blurry; he could tell that it was made from an expensive silk.

Echizen didn't seem so bothered by his silence and reached for his abandoned drink. Tezuka looked up when the arm he was studying moved.

"You should be careful," Tezuka admonished solemnly. "It could have been spiked." It wasn't smart to drink something that had been left unsupervised for even a second, after all, ignorance and carelessness was an invalid excuse for getting drunk and doing something stupid.

The brim of the highball was touching Ryoma's lips, but he had yet to tip the glass back. Echizen snorted but placed it back down nevertheless. He slanted Tezuka a look, the same infuriating brow raised again. "I'll… take your word for it," he commented dryly, looking meaningfully at Tezuka's glass that was now three and a half quarters empty.

"But then you shouldn't let it go to waste," remarked Tezuka. An equally inebriated part of his mind that was clearly not functioning properly without the other half badgered him about how absolutely disgraceful it was to waste hard-earned money. The thought was less than pleasing and hurt like his shoulder on a cold day. Guilt was something he couldn't stand. Tezuka takes hold of Echizen's glass and sips at it delicately. The unbelievable sweetness of it had him screwing his face up in disgust. He wondered how something so sweet could be classified as alcohol and grouchily slid it across the other end of the table. The bartender was there within moments and caught the highball glass before it descended onto the ground. He shot Tezuka an irritated glare from behind thick opaque eyeglasses. Tezuka disregarded the man and drained his own beverage to wash out the ghastly taste of too much sugar. Perhaps wasting things would benefit after all; nothing should have the right to be so sickeningly sweet.

Echizen made a small inarticulate noise that Tezuka couldn't discern. "That was my drink," he stated.

Tezuka hummed in agreement, nestling his head back in the crook of his elbow. Echizen's voice had a calming effect on him. "You can take mine." The glass was dangling between his fingers again and he offered it to the man.

Echizen laughed. It was rich and husky and completely, unquestionably mocking. He took the proffered drink though and peered down through the shining amber, twirling the ice around just as Tezuka had been earlier in the night. Echizen gestured for the bartender to take it.

Tezuka was no longer paying attention, having reverted back to staring at Echizen's arm. He blew on it, just because he could. It didn't really do anything than incite another raised brow from the owner of said arm. Tezuka didn't care anymore though. He was feeling dizzy and the world was still blurry and Echizen's arm was looking really comfortable at that moment. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the arm. The material was cool and soft against this heated skin, and the darkness was making the world stop spinning out of control, like it was no longer spinning off its axis.

He felt a small jolt from the arm but ignored it.

"You're leaning on me."

Tezuka made a low noise from the back of his throat, a sound that was a mixture of emotions that Echizen couldn't quite discern from. Tezuka didn't care to think about that though. What he was concerned about was how he couldn't feel the vibrations of Echizen's chest as he spoke or the beating of his pulse from where he was leaning. It left him feeling slightly disconcerted.

A hand was on his head, fingers threading through his hair like the warm rush of heat curling around his body that accompanied every sip of bourbon. Tezuka wondered if he was going to be pushed off. He didn't want to be; Echizen made a wonderful pillow.

"You're drunk."

"No," he denied drowsily, snuggling closer.

Half blind, dizzy and an absolute drunken mess, Tezuka couldn't help but think that he wanted to keep hearing that voice and feeling that touch.

"I'm happy."


End file.
